Title: Work it Out
Rating: PG for content, R for language
Pairing: moving onto almost yamagoku
Word Count: 3.318
Summary: Sometimes the biggest somethings start in the middle of nowhere. Sequel to 'Green Eyed Monster'.
AN: Okay, I need to stop writing this pairing. I feel obsessive and creepy, like some old man fondling cucumbers at the grocery or something. No one wants to be by that old man. Admit it.
This fic is somehow, miraculously a very loose sequel to Green Eyed Monster. Go figure.
Oh, god. I apologize in advance for the world's most awkwardly written conversation. Ever. Seriously, guys. I myself wanted to step out of the room. Sigh.
"Hey," a voice said, joined by the crinkling noise of a cheap sleeping bag. "Gokudera, are you awake?"
Son of a bitch, Yamamoto was a dead man. Gokudera roused himself enough to tell him so, his voice scratchy from the miniscule amount of sleep he had been able to procure.
Yamamoto laughed quietly, his silhouette barely discernable against the backdrop of the tent. Gokudera snarled and rolled over, pulling his sleeping bag over his head and enveloping himself in a stuffy little cocoon, a space all to himself where there was no Yamamoto waking him up at god-knows-when for god-knows-what.
"I wanted to know if you wanted to go for a walk," Yamamoto continued, oblivious to the fact that if Gokudera could shoot lasers from his eyes, he would waste no moment in pulling down the sleeping bag and exploding his head from his body. Gokudera took solace in the fact that could he, he would. However, the fact remained that he could not, just as the fact remained that he was stuck in a tent in the middle of the woods with Yamamoto.
Gokudera stared into the humid darkness of the sleeping bag, unblinking and angrily awake.
"You wanted to know if I wanted to go for a walk," he said slowly, voice level and hands itching to grab explosives that were. Not. There.
He could hear the soft noise of Yamamoto chuckling and the pass of a hand near his shoulder, and was that idiot leaning over him?
After a minute, Gokudera thought that maybe, now that the ass had woken Gokudera, he himself had gone back to sleep. Gokudera swore and extricated his head from the little cocoon of his sleeping bag, just to see for himself. And for the love of god, there Yamamoto was, staring down at him like he had been waiting. Like a bird waiting for a freaking worm.
"Don't lean over me like that!" Gokudera snarled, eyebrows crunching together up at Yamamoto. "Go back to sleep! Aren't you satisfied that it's going to take me another hour to get back to sleep?"
Yamamoto shifted to a lounge beside Gokudera, obeying him somewhat. His grin was evident even in the pitch black of the night, making Gokudera snappy and ignited, a candle to a lighter. A natural reaction.
"It'll be dawn soon," Yamamoto said pleasantly, as if he were just thinking aloud. "Maybe we could watch it together. The sunrise."
"Oh god," Gokudera moaned. "If I weren't doing this for Juudaime, I would strangle you where you lay." He threw an arm over his eyes, blocking any hint of Yamamoto that could be seen. Too bad he didn't have earplugs, though he didn't doubt that the idiot's chatter could get through them by the sheer will of his good-natured ness.
Yamamoto laughed again, like it just was something people did at the unholy hours of morning naturally, like people just laughed to be laughing in the fucking a.m's, and patted Gokudera's arm. "It was just a suggestion. I didn't realize you weren't a morning person."
What a load of crap, Gokudera thought, bitter and tired and annoyed as all hell. He had groused and yelled and hissy-fitted at Yamamoto so many times in the early-houred walks to school so many times he wouldn't believe for a second that the boy didn't have it ingrained in his head that Gokudera didn't do mornings. But then again, when it came to Yamamoto, Gokudera didn't really do any other time of the day, either.
"I'll let you stay alive if you shut up now," Gokudera bargained, counting to ten and back, thinking of how unhappy Tsuna would be if he brought Yamamoto's maimed corpse back with him to Japan.
"I'll start breakfast," Yamamoto announced, oblivious to both Gokudera's not-so-halfhearted death threat and the fact that there was no breakfast to start, short of finding a deer and killing it with his bare hands.
But Gokudera wasn't going to tell him that, not when putting his hands to work meant Yamamoto unzipping the tent and getting the hell away from him. Gokudera allowed himself a little smile, snuggling back into his sleeping bag with relish.
He hoped Yamamoto had gotten himself eaten by a bear before morning.
Waking up the second time around was an even more unpleasant experience that the first. Judging by the amount of light filtering in through the flimsy material of the tent, it was going full on noon. The sleeping bag clung to Gokudera as he struggled to sit up, damp with sweat and the miserable, humid condensation that had collected inside of the tent.
"God, it smells in here," He muttered, grimacing as he peeled the sleeping bag down his body, shaking it from him. The cloying scent of sweat covered by expensive deodorant was wafting from him to mix with more earthy smells of the wilderness- that and a pair of socks Yamamoto had left in the tent. Resolving to get decent and out of the tent as soon as possible, Gokudera started to make quick work of his shirt and pants, simultaneously digging fresh ones from his duffel bag.
He didn't even notice the tent front being unzipped and a Yamamoto-shaped head poking into the tent until his virtue was past saving. Sputtering, Gokudera threw a shirt in front of himself, wondering who the hell had bad enough timing to intrude right as he was wiggling out of his boxers.
"It smells in here," Yamamoto noted in a chipper voice, smiling at Gokudera. "Good morning!" He had not, contrary to Gokudera's hopes, been eaten by a bear.
Gokudera stared at him, mouth open and shirt still clutched over his lower half. "Privacy," he managed, resisting the strong urge to kick at Yamamoto's head. "I'm getting fucking dressed, you freak!"
Yamamoto laughed and excused himself, leaving Gokudera to break the world's record of fastest dressing man, just in case the baseball freak decided to get a second viewing of his pale ass. He stumbled out of the tent, one hand working his belt, and immediately reeled in the spearing light of the sun.
"Goddamn, that's bright," He said weakly, stumbling over his untied shoes. He was hardly able to make out Yamamoto kneeling near their tent, beckoning towards him. Gokudera took his time making it over to the other teen because he could.
Once he had Gokudera's attention, Yamamoto lifted himself up, something held between his hands, offered outwards to Gokudera.
"It's food," He said simply, all bright eyes and bedhead and horrible, horrible plaid shirt. Upon further inspection the taller boy was holding something Gokudera had only seen on cartoons, expecting him to take it.
Gokudera stared, unbelieving. "It's a fish on a stick."
"Yep." Yamamoto pressed the stick into Gokudera's hands, fingers brushing against rings. "I always wanted to try out this wilderness thing, haha. You know, fishing in the morning, hiking. This will be fun, don't you think?"
Gokudera, however, was still five steps behind. He held up the stick, presenting the cooked carcass of the fish to Yamamoto incredulously. "It's a fish. On a stick."
"You eat it," Yamamoto elaborated, patting his stomach for emphasis, just in case Gokudera somehow managed to have a lower IQ than him or something. "It's pretty good if you avoid the bone-"
Gokudera shoved the stick back at Yamamoto, disgusted. "Listen, idiot. I don't want this, and I don't know what you were planning today, but I don't want you near me, okay? I'll go find some berries or something, just stay over there." He pointed at the area vaguely behind the tent, near where the trees grew thicker.
Yamamoto frowned. "I don't think Tsuna sent us out here to ignore each other," he pointed out, crossing his arms.
Gokudera spat, bitter. "No, I think Tsuna sent out here because Reborn told him to," he countered. It was just like that guy, to see right through to the weak link of Tsuna's closest circle, to isolate the gap between Gokudera and Yamamoto and seek to eliminate it.
Sending Gokudera and Yamamoto into the wilderness for a week was a faulty plan if anyone had ever heard one, but Reborn had a way of knowing what he was doing. That didn't mean that Gokudera was going to fight it, tooth and nail, at every step, however.
Without waiting for a response, Gokudera turned heel and made way towards nothing in particular, preferably where Yamamoto was not. While others might believe in solving conflicts by shoving everything together until they worked themselves out, Gokudera believed strongly that ignoring his problems was the path that gave him the least headaches.
Especially when Yamamoto was involved.
After a while of stomping around in the sun-soaked wilderness, Gokudera plopped down on a tree stump, famished and wishing he hadn't been such a dick as to not accept Yamamoto's food. Fish on a stick sounded pretty good when you were hungry, it turned out, but it was too late to think like that now.
Gokudera sighed and let himself slump forward, his arms propping themselves on his knees. It would figure that he had run out of cigarettes before they had been unceremoniously dropped in the middle of nowhere, having less than no time to pack.
"This sucks," he complained, staring out at trees, trees, and more trees.
Eventually it got boring (lonely) enough, just sitting there, that Gokudera picked his way back to their badly erected camp. As he got closer it was more obvious that Yamamoto had gone his own way as well, as the taller boy was nowhere to be seen. Gokudera cursed to himself and spent a few moments kicking a pine cone about, hands in pockets and sullen expression soldered to his face.
"Ah, I've found you," And there was Yamamoto an eternity later, stumbling through a particularly dense thicket towards Gokudera, hand raised in greeting.
Gokudera caught his own hand rising and viciously shoved it into his pocket. Shit.
"Listen," Yamamoto said when he finally made it to Gokudera's side, tripping a bit on the pine cone he had just been kicking. "Listen, Gokudera. We need to talk."
Gokudera took possession of the pine cone once more, finding that kicking it was a hell of a lot easier than admitting that Yamamoto was right. He frowned when Yamamoto's sneaker came into his lowered vision, stealing away his source of distraction with ease, forcing Gokudera to look upwards, at him.
God, and he looked so serious. Gokudera felt tiny, felt so damn stupid for using the same old excuses (don't touch me, don't look at me, you're retarded) to avoid this. To avoid Yamamoto.
Yamamoto smiled, though it wasn't necessarily friendly. "It's been months, Gokudera. Since we said we would talk. When it was over."
Gokudera's hand fumbled in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes that weren't there. "I don't know what you're talking about," He said weakly, defensive to the last. His gaze dropped once more to the forest floor, picking out leaves and crumpled plants, sticks and stones.
After a while Yamamoto made a huffing noise, once again instigating something Gokudera never wanted to start in the first place. "Come with me," he said in a pleading tone, large, rough hand reaching out towards Gokudera.
Gokudera stared at it, shaking his head a little but making no noise. "I hope you don't expect me to hold your hand, asshole," he said without much conviction, stepping away before he could damn himself for stepping forward.
This time Yamamoto didn't say a word as he forced his gaze upon Gokudera's, bending to make the shorter boy look at him. Then he turned around, a wordless demand issued plainly: follow me.
Gokudera had no choice.
When Yamamoto stopped, Gokudera halted hesitantly beside him, distanced by an arm's reach of space.
"So, we're talking," he said awkwardly, roughly, starting things between them for once. He looked out over where Yamamoto had brought them, a small outcropping over the creek he must have caught the fish at that morning.
Yamamoto didn't meet his eyes, but instead took a moment to sit down. "Gokudera," He said finally, unaware or perhaps very aware that the moments of silence had had Gokudera hanging on by the butterflies in his stomach, eager now to dive into what needed to be said. He laughed suddenly, so awkward and loud. "Maybe you'll sit beside me?"
Gokudera shrugged, though the other boy couldn't see the motion. He sat closer than he had aimed for, the distance between himself and Yamamoto so small that their knees and shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved.
"Where to start, right?" If his voice hadn't wavered, Gokudera would have been pissed at Yamamoto for starting off so lightly. But the shake in his words, the slight inflection of nervousness made Gokudera realize that they were both going to have to try in this…. whatever this was, a conversation or a mutual soul-search or whatever the hell it ended up being.
Gokudera picked at his ear, pressing some errant strands of hair behind it. "Everything worked out," he started, deciding to go broad and let Yamamoto steer this monstrosity of lurching emotional awkwardness towards a topic.
"Yeah," Yamamoto said, sounding weary. "It kind of had to, didn't it?" He laughed, but it wasn't anything contrived of joy or light-heartedness. It was weighted and forced, accentuated by the twisting of his hands. "I'm glad though, I'm glad."
"Me too," Gokudera said after a while, the tinkling of the stream a small roar in comparison to they eddying flow of their conversation.
"Tsuna said," And there it was, Yamamoto taking the reigns again, turning steel-bright eyes to Gokudera, pinning him against the moss he sat on. "That in the future, you weren't you. He said that something had gone out or something, something in you."
"Tsuna was dead," Gokudera responded coldly. What was past was past, and that him would never come to be. It was stupid for Yamamoto to bring it up, to skirt what really needed to be discussed with painful analysis' of something that was better left alone. "You were the same way, when we… when me and Tsuna met you. Weren't the same." He threw a rock, needing to give his hands something to do.
Yamamoto smiled wanly. "Do you know," he started, watching Gokudera pick up another rock, eyes following its arc through the air. "What I wanted to tell you was I've been thinking about that a lot. How sad it is."
Gokudera scoffed, head turning into his drawn-up knees. "What's over is over," He bit out. It was over, they had stopped it from happening and now it was time to just fucking let the future become history already.
"But it's still there," Yamamoto pressed, voice cutting through to Gokudera. "Doesn't it bother you that ten years from now, me and you can end up the same? Tsuna could die, anything could happen, and we can end up there again. The way we are now," He paused, eyebrows drawing together. "The way I see it, if we had tried harder, even then, I could have made you happy."
Gokudera gawked, his eyes wide and wavering on Yamamoto's face. "What do you mean," he demanded, voice flat, unyielding.
Yamamoto smiled, happy and sad and everything Gokudera loved and hated to see on his face all at once. "I don't ever want us to end up where we're miserable." He said softly, unable to read Gokudera's face. The other's body language, however, was stiff and sharp, as good as a verbal 'shut up'. Yamamoto allowed himself a slight laugh. "And the way we are now is just going to bring us to somewhere like that again. Unhappy."
"It's not that easy," Gokudera said abruptly. "Whatever you're saying, nothing is as easy as just changing shit like that. Just because you suddenly want to make everything better-"
"Don't you?" Yamamoto interjected, gazing steadily at Gokudera, mouth firmly set in a serious line. "Or do you want to keep sidestepping this? Because I know it's easier for me, too-"
"Shut the fuck up," Gokudera snarled. "Shut the fuck up and listen for a minute. You… you are everything I can't stand, Yamamoto. You know that. You have to."
"I do," Yamamoto said, but something in his voice was encouraging, or at least it seemed to Gokudera, because he took it as if he were to continue.
"I… " Gokudera was starting to lose his wind, his eyes searching everywhere but where Yamamoto was sitting for what to say next. "You act like it was your fault, that I wasn't… we weren't happy. But I don't see how you can say that, you idiot. I was there too."
"Are you happy now?" Yamamoto pressed, moving towards Gokudera a fractional amount, their shoulders pressing now. "With… how this is?"
Gokudera turned his head to the side, but Yamamoto could see the sheen of crimson stealing across his face, down his neck. "We can try harder," he said haltingly.
A brief silence feel over them. We. There was a we, then.
Yamamoto scratched at his chin, then.
"Would you try a fish on a stick?" Yamamoto asked, and screw it all if Gokudera didn't see red. The next thing Yamamoto knew was that he was wet and laughing, looking up at Gokudera, who was sitting with his arms outstretched from pushing him into the creek.
Then the weight, the world of crazy anger and doubt was lifted a little from them, their words managing to leak some of the seriousness from it. Gokudera dug his face into his knees and began to laugh, body shaking. Yamamoto drank it in.
So they would just try harder, then.
AN: JESUS MARY JOSEPH, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT. ARGH I AM GOING TO SLEEP NOW. I hate writing follow-ups that need an even bigger follow up than before. Why can't these two just do what I want them to do and stop being so difficult? Why can't I just write a nice make-out fic like I had planned? WHY WHY WHY.
Haha, dammit all, that was still fun to write.